Rome CAO: This thesis interrogates the constantly evolving relationship between liminal figures in architecture to produce cohesion and a state of contradiction simultaneously.

In his seminal book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi argued for the embrace of a messy vitality. Taking Venturi’s position as a point of reference, this thesis works with a contemporary approach to the coexistence of formal clarity with unruly formal logics. The project is the design of the Academy Museum of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on the LACMA campus in Los Angeles.

It is the intention of thesis to evolve new speciation from the formal primitive, imbuing the absent figure with new aesthetic qualities

A set of spheres is repeatedly scaled and relocated adjacent to one another. The multiple geometrical centers thus established are used to carve and compress spaces within the original building mass, the existing May Company building.

Each sphere is arranged tangentially to the others and bisected by cutting its shell to create a series of distinctive spaces in the building. Maintaining both malleable and rigid thresholds, the unique spatial requirements of each program are accommodated. The AMMPAS complex contains: a 1000-seat theater with an adjacent stage and lobby area, public spaces, a museum, and multiple administrative offices.

The formal strategy is to extrude the existing building volume which reorients the corner site to allow for for public areas and landscape, producing a new way of engaging the campus.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
RC: Étienne-Louis Boullée, Cenotaph for Newton and Robert Venturi.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
RC: Reading Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.